Preclass Hooks/West

“Commodity culture in the United States exploits conventional thinking about race, gender, and sexual desire by ‘working’ both the idea that racial difference marks one as Other and the assumption that sexual agency expressed within the context of racialized sexual encounter is a conversion experience that alters one’s place and participation in contemporary cultural politics” (309)

I think this quote is interesting because I think it really sums up Bell Hook’s main idea in her text “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”. In this text, Hook discusses this notion of the Other, touching upon the well known idea that in American history and culture, if you are not considered a part of the dominate society, then you are different; other.  She goes on to explore the concept of our culture having proliferated the idea that some intense pleasure could be derived from engaging in sexual encounters with those of the Other. She discusses the idea that a kind of transformation or change will happen if one explores the world of difference. She compares this to leaving “behind white ‘innocence’ and enter[ing] the world of ‘experience’” (309). They move away from the same, normal ways of the dominant society and into the more exciting and enticing experiences.   

 “Hence for liberals, black people are to be “included” and “integrated” into “our” society and culture, while for conservatives they are to be “well-behaved” and “worthy of acceptance” by ‘our’ way of life. Both fail to see that the presences and predicaments of black people are neither additions to nor defections from American life, but rather constitutive elements of that life” (627).

I think this quote from Cornel West text “Race matters” is important in that it sheds light on the problems with both liberalists and conservative’s views of racism. Similar to Hooks text, both political parties view blacks as “Other”, with on side wishing for blacks to be integrated into society while the other wishes it to conform to society. West argues that the best way to start a framework to solving these racial issues is “to begin with a frank acknowledgment of the basic humanness and Americaness of each of us. And we must acknowledge that as a people – E Pluribus Unum – we are on a slippery slope toward economic strife social turmoil, and cultural chaos.” (628). I like this quote because it identifies that the problem does not rest with one side, but with everyone as a humans. We are fragmented and disjunct, causing major problems for us that will only continue if we don’t find a solution together.